I've played a few hours and seen 1 zombie and maybe 3 loots items after searching over 60 buildings.

Playing on UK servers.

There is literally nothing. I even made sure to walk in many random directions from start to make sure i wasn't just being beaten to the loot by other players.

Happened to me 7/8 times when i lost connection or re logged.

On the main menu screen my character appears to have his old loot but as soon as i reconnect the loot is gone and character re set.